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The State Sanctioned Kidnapping Industry: How CPS and Its Allies Profit from Destroying Families
American Greatness ^ | 12 Feb, 2025 | Maureen Steele

Posted on 02/12/2025 4:32:30 AM PST by MtnClimber

CPS profits from family separation, turning child welfare into a billion-dollar industry where courts, agencies, and service providers cash in on every removal. It’s a racket that must end.

Child Protective Services (CPS) and its various counterparts—such as the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), the Department of Family Services (DFS), the Department of Children and Families (DCF), and other similarly named agencies—operate under the guise of protecting children. In reality, these agencies have become an industry unto themselves, profiting off the removal of children and the destruction of families. Every child taken from their home represents a payday for the state, foster care agencies, court-mandated service providers, and an entire network of professionals whose financial survival depends on keeping the system running.

Most people don’t realize that removing children from their homes is not just an act of state intervention—it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, states receive federal Title IV-E funding for every child placed in foster care. The more children removed, the more money the state gets. States even receive bonus payments for finalized adoptions, creating an incentive to permanently sever parental rights rather than reunite families.

CPS doesn’t operate alone in this racket. The moment a child is taken, a network of court-mandated services kicks into gear, forcing parents to pay exorbitant fees for programs they are required to complete before they can even hope to regain custody of their child.

These include parenting classes, which families are forced to attend and which are expensive, often ineffective courses, regardless of whether parenting skills were ever an issue. Also included are anger management programs. Even if there’s no history of violence or abuse, parents are often ordered into these classes, which they must pay for out of pocket. Supervised visitation centers where parents who want to see their own children are frequently required to do so under supervision at a private facility that charges by the hour. And court-ordered therapy, where parents are forced into therapy, often with state-approved providers who have financial incentives to keep cases open. All of which gets very expensive very quickly.

Judges, attorneys, social workers, therapists, and foster care agencies all make money off keeping children in the system. The longer a case drags on, the more everyone profits—except the families being destroyed in the process.

In the United States, the number of children entering foster care annually has been steadily on the rise over the past several decades. By the end of 1987, an estimated 285,000 children were in foster care, increasing to approximately 323,000 by the end of 1988. Numbers increased in the 1990s, from 400,000 in 1990 to 568,000 in 1999. In recent years, it’s only gotten worse as approximately 606,031 children passed through the U.S. foster care system over the course of the year.

This trend does not indicate a rise in child abuse but rather an increase in government overreach.

Let’s be crystal clear: CPS and family courts are not in the business of protecting children. They are in the business of taking children—because that’s where the money is.

Mandatory reporters, acting under fear of liability, flood CPS with baseless reports, ensnaring innocent families in a system designed to keep them trapped. Once CPS gets involved, they are not incentivized to clear you. They are incentivized to keep you in their grasp.

Because every child they remove from a home is money in the bank.

Parents thrown into this corrupt machine have no real due process. CPS operates under civil law, which means there is no jury trial. There is no presumption of innocence. The “preponderance of evidence” standard (a mere 51% certainty) is used to rip children from their homes. Judges rubber-stamp whatever CPS recommends. Lawyers refuse to challenge unconstitutional statutes, telling parents to “just comply.”

Once a child is placed into foster care, the financial exploitation doesn’t stop. Foster parents receive government stipends per child, but many of the real profits go to private foster care agencies that receive thousands of dollars per child per month. Group homes and residential treatment centers make even more, often billing the government at insane rates while providing substandard care.

On top of that, children in state custody are frequently overmedicated, as psychiatric drugs become the go-to solution for “behavioral problems”—problems that, in many cases, stem from the trauma of being forcibly removed from their families. Pharmaceutical companies also benefit from this cycle, making millions by turning wards of the state into lifelong patients.

It’s past time to ask, who really benefits from all this? Follow the money, and you’ll see that CPS is not about protecting children—it’s about funding a vast, government-backed business. Family courts operate in secrecy, shielded from public scrutiny, while the professionals inside them profit from prolonged legal battles, forced compliance programs, and state-sanctioned child trafficking under the name of “protection.”

It’s time to end the financial incentives behind family separation and expose CPS for what it is—a predatory industry disguised as child welfare.

This isn’t justice. It’s a racket.

And it’s state-sanctioned child trafficking.

This has to stop.

CPS and family courts have turned into an industry of destruction, feeding off the lives of parents and children for profit. This isn’t about protecting kids—it’s about keeping the money flowing.

And it has to end.

The American Made Foundation and the United Law Coalition are preparing to go after these agencies, these judges, and the corrupt lawyers.

The message is clear: “You are not above the law. You will not continue to violate families’ rights without consequence. You will be exposed and held accountable.”

Justice is coming.


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: amf; children; cps; fostercare; fosterchildren; leftism; ulc; unitedlawcoalition

1 posted on 02/12/2025 4:32:30 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

Where does the corruption end?


2 posted on 02/12/2025 4:32:42 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Spot on. Do something about it.


3 posted on 02/12/2025 4:37:12 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: MtnClimber

But what about kids in actual abusive situations?

And one such family lived in the slum lord rental next to us at one point in NYS.

Those kids were filthy, underfed, underclothed and being sexually abused.

I can’t see leaving them there.


4 posted on 02/12/2025 4:41:37 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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To: metmom

I think the children who are neglected do need to be protected, but are the ones likely to fall through the cracks.


5 posted on 02/12/2025 4:52:06 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

This was going on in my county when I first came here almost fifty years ago. DSS would take babies and young children from poor families who didn’t have the means to fight it in court. The county also held any welfare/housing benefits over their head.


6 posted on 02/12/2025 4:55:43 AM PST by ryderann
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To: MtnClimber
A related article: Child Protective Services is an Unjustified and Illegitimate Institution.
7 posted on 02/12/2025 4:56:36 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: metmom
But what about kids in actual abusive situations?

Charge the parents with crimes. Do not institute a bureaucracy wielding unconstitutional powers.

Consider the data in post 7.

8 posted on 02/12/2025 5:00:03 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: Carry_Okie

I agree it’s abusive and corrupt.

But OK, the parents are charged with crimes, what happens to the kids?

FWIW, I knew people who abused the system and did it just for the money, and I’ve heard far too many horror stories of those kids who CPS completely ignored and died from their abuse.

And I know one FANTASTIC Christian couple who fostered man, many kids, most of whom came to Christ and other Christian couples who were good foster parents. ONe of them told me once that if a child has been in the foster care system for more than 2 years, it was guaranteed they had been sexually abused during that time.

Still, what is the answer when kids are being sexually, physically abused and living in disgusting, filthy conditions?

The need for foster parents is legitimate. But as everything the government manages, it’s 99% mismanaged and the kids get further abused.


9 posted on 02/12/2025 5:06:27 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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To: metmom
But OK, the parents are charged with crimes, what happens to the kids?

Start with churches organizing foster care and placement services.

10 posted on 02/12/2025 5:12:49 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: MtnClimber
It’s a racket that must end.

At the end of a gun, AFAIC. All options on the table if it was my child.

11 posted on 02/12/2025 5:54:53 AM PST by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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To: MtnClimber

Rather than focusing on the revenge aspect - punishing past overreach...

How can the taking of children be reduced to only those that really need the rescue - how do we disincentivize the system? Moving from a per child headcount system to ... what?


12 posted on 02/12/2025 6:31:04 AM PST by larrytown (A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Then they graduate...)
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To: Carry_Okie

That’d be a better option than the current foster care system, but if the government has any say in it, that would be a real problem.


13 posted on 02/12/2025 7:03:36 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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To: larrytown

Excellent questions.


14 posted on 02/12/2025 7:04:11 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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To: MtnClimber

It’s a racket for sure. Personal experience. A nightmare.


15 posted on 02/12/2025 8:08:34 AM PST by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: metmom
But what about kids in actual abusive situations?

What about them?

The existing government/nonprofit complex IS an abusive situation, and you're paying for it. It must end.

Find a different way of dealing with "private" abuse ... the current way of dealing with "private" abuse is a much greater system of "public" abuse.

16 posted on 02/12/2025 8:15:45 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: metmom

Did CPS intervene for those kids? I doubt it, no profit motive. The system we have now does more harm than good. Are we to allow our compassion for some ruin the lives of many more?

In better times those parents would have been charged with crimes and the children would have been put in a Christian orphanage funded by charity.


17 posted on 02/12/2025 8:29:17 AM PST by RightOnTheBorder
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To: RightOnTheBorder

Yes. Matter of fact, the mom was pregnant with twins and the abuse was so bad that the doctors convinced her to have her tubes tied (they were numbers 3 & 4) but didn’t tell her the twins would not be going home with her.

And sadly, that’s almost unheard of. Usually they let the mother, who has abused all her other kids, take the baby home because you can’t presume that she’s going to abuse that one too. They can only take the children AFTER they’ve been abused.

FReepmail.....


18 posted on 02/12/2025 10:49:02 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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